A pioneering new computer model has been developed to simulate the whole chain of hazard events triggered by offshore mega subduction earthquakes, by a team involving UCL and Bristol engineers. Read more

Scientists say they have found a way to provide faster and more accurate early warning systems for tsunamis. A German team says GPS satellite-based positioning could offer detailed information about the events within minutes of an earthquake occurring. They believe the technology could have improved alerts issued when the devastating tsunami hit Japan in 2011. Read more

The high-frequency radar that detected the devastating March 11 tsunami, as it swept toward the coasts of California and Japan, could form part of new early warning systems, scientists say.It was the first time a tsunami has been observed on radar.Professor John Largier, an oceanographer at the University of California, Davis, Bodega Marine Laboratory and his colleagues have been using a high-frequency radar array at the Bodega Marine Lab to study ocean currents for the last 10 years. The Bodega lab is part of a network of coastal radar sites funded by the State of California for oceanographic research.Read more

Thousands of people have been evacuated from the coast in Hawaii as it braces for a series of tsunamis in the wake of the Japanese earthquake.The first warning sirens went off at about 2200 local time, (0800GMT Friday) and the first waves were expected at 1307 GMT.Read more

The tsunami set off by Japan's major earthquake is currently higher than some Pacific islandswhich it could wash over, the International Federation of RedCross and Red Crescent Societies said on Friday.Read more

Seismologists have developed a new system that could be used to warn future populations of an impending tsunami only minutes after the initial earthquake. The system, known as RTerg, could help reduce the death toll by giving local residents valuable time to move to safer ground. The study by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology appears in the March 5 edition of Geophysical Research Letters.Read more

The CNMI is very susceptible to tsunamis-especially local ones-because it is situated in an area surrounded by a lot of seismic activity, according to Charles Guard, the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Guam.In an interview with Saipan Tribune yesterday, Guard said people don't usually realise the CNMI's vulnerability because tsunamis are a rare event.Read more

NASA-led research team has successfully demonstrated for the first time elements of a prototype tsunami prediction system that quickly and accurately assesses large earthquakes and estimates the size of resulting tsunamis.After the magnitude 8.8 Chilean earthquake on Feb. 27, a team led by Y. Tony Song of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used real-time data from the agency's Global Differential GPS (GDGPS) network to successfully predict the size of the resulting tsunami. The network, managed by JPL, combines global and regional real-time data from hundreds of GPS sites and estimates their positions every second. It can detect ground motions as small as a few centimetres. Read more

Boulder scientists from the Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Sciences, or CIRES -- a joint institute of the University of Colorado and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- are working to find ways to better detect the tsunamis waves as they ripple through open water.A new study led by CIRES scientist Manoj Nair found that tsunamis generate an electric field as they travel, which can be picked up by the vast network of communications cables that already crisscross the ocean floor. Seawater -- which is salty and, therefore, a good conductor -- generates a small amount of electricity as it moves across the Earth's magnetic field.

"By monitoring voltages across this network of ocean cables, we may be able to enhance the current tsunami warning system" - Manoj Nair.

Eighteen countries around the Indian Ocean have held a mass drill aimed at testing tsunami early warning systems.The UN-backed drill simulated the 2004 quake off the coast of Sumatra which killed more than 200,000 people, half of them in Indonesia's Aceh province.Read more